What if the Sahara turned green again?

Описание: What if the Sahara turned green again? It has been green before: during the African Humid Period, much of it had vegetation and lakes. Palaeolake Megachad was larger than today's Caspian Sea. [1, 2, 4]

The return to desert did not happen everywhere at once. A marine dust record off western Africa points to a change within decades to centuries; the Lake Yoa record in eastern Sahara shows a more gradual drying. [1, 3]

The catch in this hypothetical: the Sahara now sends mineral dust across the Atlantic. Some reaches the Amazon, carrying phosphorus from an ancient lake bed in Chad. The earlier humid period had much less dust. This is not a prediction of when the Sahara might turn green again or what would happen to the rainforest. [2, 5]

Sources:
[1] https://authors.library.caltech.edu/record...
[2] https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/...
[3] https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/publication/4...
[4] https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/27810
[5] https://www.nasa.gov/missions/calipso/nasa...

AI-generated visuals. #Shorts #Sahara #WhatIf #ClimateHistory